Simulation for estimating smear noise and sensitivity of CCD image sensors having square pixels cells less than 2.0 um

Koji Kikuchi; Shinji Miyazawa; Yoshinori Uchida; Hiroe Kamata; Teruo Hirayama

doi:10.1117/12.704631

21 February 2007 Simulation for estimating smear noise and sensitivity of CCD image sensors having square pixels less than 2.0 &mgr;m

Koji Kikuchi, Shinji Miyazawa, Yoshinori Uchida, Hiroe Kamata, Teruo Hirayama

Author Affiliations +

Proceedings Volume 6501, Sensors, Cameras, and Systems for Scientific/Industrial Applications VIII; 650105 (2007) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.704631
Event: Electronic Imaging 2007, 2007, San Jose, CA, United States

Abstract

As a consequence of the reduction in the pixel sizes of charge coupled device (CCD) image sensors, the sensitivity of these sensors has decreased, which means that their signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) has also decreased even though the amount of noise is kept constant. In order to maintain and even increase the SNR, we evaluated a simulation method for estimating the sensitivity and smear noise. Smear noise and sensitivity are defined by the number of electrons in vertical registers and photodiodes, respectively. We used a finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method to simulate the light energy which is proportional to electrons generated in a Si substrate. Using this simulation, we were able to estimate sensitivity and smear noise accurately and optimize the structure of on-chip lenses (OCLs) with respect to these parameters. When we optimized an OCL structure for an interline transfer (IT)-CCD having 1.86-&mgr;m-square pixels, we found that the optimal thickness of the OCL in regards to the smear noise was 0.25 &mgr;m thinner than the optimal thickness for the sensitivity. This result demonstrates that when designing the structures of image sensors, including the OCL shape, it is not only necessary to consider the sensitivity, but it is also important to take the smear noise into consideration.

Citation Download Citation

Koji Kikuchi, Shinji Miyazawa, Yoshinori Uchida, Hiroe Kamata, and Teruo Hirayama "Simulation for estimating smear noise and sensitivity of CCD image sensors having square pixels less than 2.0 &mgr;m", Proc. SPIE 6501, Sensors, Cameras, and Systems for Scientific/Industrial Applications VIII, 650105 (21 February 2007); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.704631

ACCESS THE FULL ARTICLE

INSTITUTIONAL
Select your institution to access the SPIE Digital Library.

SELECT YOUR INSTITUTION

PERSONAL
Sign in with your SPIE account to access your personal subscriptions or to use specific features such as save to my library, sign up for alerts, save searches, etc.

PERSONAL SIGN IN

No SPIE Account? Create one

PURCHASE THIS CONTENT

SUBSCRIBE TO DIGITAL LIBRARY

50 downloads per 1-year subscription

Members: $195

Non-members: $335 ADD TO CART

25 downloads per 1 - year subscription

Members: $145

Non-members: $250 ADD TO CART

PURCHASE SINGLE ARTICLE

Includes PDF, HTML & Video, when available

Members: $17.00

Non-members: $21.00 ADD TO CART

PROCEEDINGS
7 PAGES

DOWNLOAD PAPER SAVE TO MY LIBRARY

GET CITATION

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

Get copyright permission Get copyright permission on Copyright Marketplace

KEYWORDS

Signal to noise ratio

Charge-coupled devices

CCD image sensors

Image sensors

Electrons

Finite-difference time-domain method

Silicon

Show All Keywords

Keywords/Phrases

Search In:

Publication Years